Unless you have contacted me before and we've made arrangements, any new commission request after this post will be put on the MAY waiting slots. These will be reserved after you send me concrete ideas/references, otherwise first come, first served.

Please read my commission details (mischievousmartian.deviantart.…) thoroughly before contacting me with any kind of commission work so I may be spared from having to sound redundant.

For the ones listed, your sketches will be sent within the next week. No bullshit.

Unless you have contacted me before and we've made arrangements, any new commission request after this post will be put on the FEBRUARY waiting slots. These will be reserved after you send me concrete ideas/references, otherwise first come, first served.

Commission details here: mischievousmartian.deviantart.… Please read thoroughly before contacting me with any kind of commission work so I may be spared from having to sound redundant. Kthx.

IMPORTANT: If you've contacted me before January and haven't heard back from me, or if you've contacted me and I agreed but your name isn't listed, DA message me and give me a chance to sort it out. December had been an insane time for me so I might have overlooked your request by mistake. For that I sincerely apologize.

And just to refresh our memory, here's my GUIDELINE. Please peruse it thoroughly as to avoid any misunderstanding:

* I offer purely CHARACTER illustrations.

* All my work is currently in digital format and the following price are for personal commissions only. Please PM me via note or email me (skincoloredcoffee@hotmail.com) for commercial related work.

* Your own characters are copyrighted to you and I will not use them for commercial purposes, but I reserve the right to use the finished images and/or final printed publications for my personal portfolio and/or post it in websites which I am a member of.

* This might go without saying, but I have the right to decline any commission proposal directed to me.

For the time being, generally I DON'T accept:portraits, full paintings, decals, tattoos, graphic designing, interior designing, and pro-bono requests.

BackgroundsNone whatsoever. The character/s will be put on limbo (that reoccurring white expanse of nothingness you'll find in my drawings)

Pricing- Face/waist-up: US$40- Full-body: US$50- Each additional character: + 50% (this means a waist-up of Holmes and Watson will set you back $60, while a scene involving full-bodied Holmes and Watson will cost $75)- Even when they're not really characters, additional elements that are about as big as the characters will be charged as additional characters (this means full-body Holmes and Watson and a steampunk tank will cost you $100)- Don't have any description? That's character creation. $200, no additional character option.- Full-color/monochromatic/line-only drawings are priced the same.

CreditPlease don't remove any signature/website address I placed on my work. I guarantee you I will be discreet in where I'm putting them.

Process1. Send me the contents of the commission and references via DA note. Yes, references are a must, unless you expect me to create a character for you.2. Once we agreed on the rates and schedule I'll send you a rough sketch.3. You get a single chance of revision here. Once you agreed on the sketch please pay 50% up front first.4. Once I've gotten the first half of the payment I'll finish the work according to the agreed deadline, and send you the low-res file.5. As soon as I received the second half of the payment I'll send you the hi-res JPEG file (max 150dpi A4 size).

PaymentPayPal. Once we've established a deal I'll let you in on the details.

* Shop can be closed at any time, so while I will not cancel commissions that's already at least 50% paid, please reserve slots as soon as possible because first come, first served

I'm sorry but I'm swamped. As you can see, my DA page's cobwebs have cobwebs hanging from their cobwebs as getting a dayjob seems to be the worst-best thing to happen to my personal quality time. To this day I still owe three people commissions for their JULY slots:

If you're one of the three, I extend my deepest apology to you. Please PM me whether you're still interested on the commissions or not. If not, the blame is entirely on me and more power to you--may better luck and timing come next time. If yes, I would unfortunately have to put you on hold indefinitely, like in one of those costumer care hotlines when they said they're going to put you through to the manager but the manager never really did come and you're stuck listening to the same pre-recorded corporate jingle or some lame-ass classical song. But unlike those hotlines, I can promise you that your commissions will be done WITHIN THIS YEAR. I'd be damned if they don't.

If you're not one of the three, I extend my sort-of-deep-but-not-that-deep apology to you, as I currently have work shoved so far up my butt I'm coughing PowerPoint bullets. I'm sorry. There's just no time for both work and DA--my timetable is in shambles right now.

DA Commission Shop is closed until further notice, friends. On-going and commercial projects, however, are still on. PM me if you had one and I'll see if I could squeeze you in (or not).

Those who are in the June waiting slots, I'm working on your drafts/finals, so I ask for your patience.

Unless you have contacted me before and we've made arrangements, any new commission request after this post will be put on the JULY waiting slots. These will be reserved after you send me concrete ideas/references, otherwise first come, first served.

Commission details here: mischievousmartian.deviantart.…Please read thoroughly before contacting me with any kind of commission work so I may be spared from having to sound redundant. Kthx.

In other news, HOLY SHIT. 200,000+ pageviews? Really? Wow, thanks so much. I'm honored some of you are finding my work likeable. Love you guys lots.

Those who are in the March waiting slots, I'm working on your drafts/finals, so I ask for your patience.

Unless you have contacted me before and we've made arrangements, any new commission request after this post will be put on the APRIL waiting slots. These will be reserved after you send me concrete ideas/references, otherwise first come, first served.

Also, for those of you still looking for an idea, I kindly, politely request that 'Walking the Dog' would no longer be used as reference unless you're talking about the color scheme. Painting techniques, feel, idea, anything else about the damn thing has been done to death, as since its creation to date it has 23 people basing it as main reference for various projects and commissions. That's a big number. 23 people could fill out an entire bus. I'm already having trouble differentiating from one derivative piece from another because I'm sure you don't want your OC to look like 23 other OCs out there, do you? Please, please for the sake of my sanity, give my other works the same amount of love and let the 'Dog' lie for a month or two. Of course, its print is still on sale and you're more than welcome to purchase it.

Seriously off limits.

For the peeps who have completed payment, thank you for your business, and looking forward to your next visit.

---Please read the commission guidelines here first before committing to anything.

Aight folks, due to popular demands and ridiculous death threats, I'm reopening shop. But truthfully I got a tad overwhelmed the last time I opened commissions because nearly everyone wanted scenes with backgrounds, so this time I'll be setting up a different set of guidelines.

* I will now offer purely CHARACTER illustrations.

* All my work is currently in digital format and the following price are for personal commissions only. Please PM me via note or email me (skincoloredcoffee@hotmail.com) for commercial related work.

* Your own characters are copyrighted to you and I will not use them for commercial purposes, but I reserve the right to use the finished images and/or final printed publications for my personal portfolio and/or post it in websites which I am a member of.

* This might go without saying, but I have the right to decline any commission proposal directed to me.

StyleSimple painting/cell-shade style coloring. Rough example:

Off LimitsDue to repetitive demands. Recreating color scheme okay, other than that not okay. Please give my other works some lovin' too.

BackgroundsNone whatsoever. The character/s will be put on limbo (that reoccurring white expanse of nothingness you'll find in my drawings)

Pricing- Face/waist-up: US$40- Full-body: US$50- Each additional character: + 50% (this means a waist-up of Holmes and Watson will set you back $60, while a scene involving full-bodied Holmes and Watson will cost $75)- Even when they're not really characters, additional elements that are about as big as the characters will be charged as additional characters (this means full-body Holmes and Watson and a steampunk tank will cost you $100)- Don't have any description? That's character creation. $200, no additional character option.- Full-color/monochromatic/line-only drawings are priced the same.

CreditPlease don't remove any signature/website address I placed on my work. I guarantee you I will be discreet in where I'm putting them.

Process1. Send me the contents of the commission and references via DA note. Yes, references are a must, unless you expect me to create a character for you.2. Once we agreed on the rates and schedule I'll send you a rough sketch.3. You get a single chance of revision here. Once you agreed on the sketch please pay 50% up front first.4. Once I've gotten the first half of the payment I'll finish the work according to the agreed deadline, and send you the low-res file.5. As soon as I received the second half of the payment I'll send you the hi-res JPEG file (max 200dpi A4 size).

PaymentPayPal. Once we've established a deal I'll let you in on the details.

* Shop can be closed at any time, so while I will not cancel commissions that's already at least 50% paid, please reserve slots as soon as possible because first come, first served

All the best. So my resolution is to live healthier starting 2010, which I think I'm failing already. What's yours?

I know the last update was like 578644741 years ago, but ah, work sort of got in the way of things. I have my muse beside me as I'm typing this, screaming emo-esquely into my ear articulating (what he keeps insisting are) jaw-dropping, ground-breaking, logic-defying, awe-inspiring and dryhump-inducing ideas while I make catatonic nods and non-committal noises, wishing he'd stop being so prolific when I'm hard at work or trying to fall asleep, for crying out loud. Muses. Our body clock never seemed to match theirs.

I'm consciously suppressing the urge to draw personal work so hard right now I think I might constipate. Please finish soon, dear work.

...won 3rd place on the 2D category of the 2009 Digital Artists Awards, with the great Dave Gibbons as one of the judges. The artwork was displayed as part of an exhibition at Blackall Studios, Shoreditch, London, from Friday 2nd October to Saturday 10th October, 2009.

Goodnight, Ganymede</strong>

...won an Excellence Award (I wish someone would have an 'Awesumence Award' category up. That would rock) in the 2009 Asiagraph CG Competition. I'd love to attend the exhibition (Oct 22nd to 25th, 2009, at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, Tokyo International Exchange Center), but alas I am homebound and would have to pass. Thanks and congrats for the uber-talented for giving me the heads-up and congrats for the rest of the peoples also making the cut.

(Noticed a few other Indonesians up there too, nais werk guys, selamat yee )

* commissions are still out * sorry for the late replies for mails and messages* don't forget to pick up Udon's Darkstalkers Tribute book, with Romantic Night Out</strong> inside!

It's the only thing on sale for now but I promise I'll get the others up soon. As a sidenote, the watermark on the preview will not appear on the actual print. Do check out my page regularly to see what other pieces are on sale!

Oh and, if a particular piece is a submission for a book/other commercial product that is still in printing process, that piece will not be available for sale here until the product is on sale.

For those of you who have made payment and/or have received sketches, I assure you your requests will be finished upon the agreed deadline, so relax.

For those of you who had discussed commission details with me but haven't made payment and/or received any sketches, your requests will most likely take on an extended deadline and I will contact you personally about this as soon as I have the time.

As for everyone else, I offer my apologies.

I know full well my gallery is in shambles and that the last new update was from January, but I'm still here. Life just got in the way of too many things right now. I'll try my best to post some new artwork and will be sure to drop a line when the shop's open again, and hopefully soon. Thank you!

Hi! I picked this piece for a step-by-step because unlike most of the stuff in my gallery which came with like 20+ layers and about 7 mirror files for milestones, it had a pleasantly straightforward process. That way Id be able to get my point across better and not irk you guys with unnecessary details sprung from my sucky indecisiveness and lame incompetence.

I consider myself more of a lineartist than anything else, so my coloring process would sound retarded and come unsurprisingly as a no-brainer. If you expected fancy painting tips or lighting theories or in-depth reflected colors or other complicated thingamajigs, be forewarned that you wont find any of them here. Im the sort who puts impression before technique and for me, as long as Im happy with the outcome, even the most retarded and simplest of processes is agreeable. Its even better because doing things simple would just mean cutting back time and effort! Unless, of course, youre awesome and you like to do things the hard way, just because you can. Should that be the case, I salute you and I suppose I should be the one checking out your step-by-step.

Anyhoo, this is not a tutorial. I dont tutor because Im sure each of us has our own way of doing things. This here just happens to be mine:

1. First, I toyed with the idea in my head and then put it into drawing. No need to be neat here, just overall general placement and how the image should roughly look. I like couches and abs, so there you go. The rest I see as decorations.

2. Refined the rough sketch. Fixed the perspective, adjusted the composition, adjusted the characters positions using actual anatomical proportions. Most of us would want to get straight past this point and actually DRAW, but I consider spending more time in this step would mean less hassle afterwards.

3. Filled the wire figures with muscles and corrected some slight anatomy issues. I like making subtle details when drawing poses, like maybe a twist on the ankle or a slight curbing of the toes, or the sexy taut lines made by the muscles beneath as they scream with tension. I find that the human body has too many awesomeness to offer visually, even when those are only faint contours and jagged lines.

4. Toning. I find it easier making values with black-and-white than using actual colors, which have different hues and values in themselves. If you have no trouble using colors as values then bless you; unfortunately Im not that speshul. Picked a new layer and set to multiply, started toning by giving different values to different objects according to their basic colors in reality. E.g., jeans would be darker than skin because it should be dark blue whilst skin is mostly, well, skin color. Giving basic colors to each object would give a more realistic tone once weve overlapped them with shadows; everything would set itself apart from the rest nicely.

5. Created a new layer set to overlay to tint the value with their actual colors. The colors would seem washed and desaturated when using overlay or color, but in my case since its indoors I figured the colors would naturally be desaturated anyway.

6. Made a second overlay layer to add the final atmospheric and moody touch. Usually this layer would consist of a single main tone and a few others here and there for accent. Lots of red, add a little purple and blue, and the image is close to being finished.

7. Finishing touches, usually on a layer set to normal. Highlights, details, some cleaning up, slap on a title, and voila, the final product!

Photoshop + Wacom all the way. No textures, no fancy brushes, no nothing out of the ordinary. I know and apologize that I made such an incomprehensibly sucky step-by-steptoo many words, too little point. Im an artist after all and not a best-selling DIY author. I promise Ill try harder next time, if you guys are still up for more.

The crown jewels of the book, of course, would be the works of everyone's heroes such as Bobby Chiu, Jude Palancar, Michael Kaluta, Jason Chan, Frank Cho, Ryohei Hase, Adam Hughes, and many other revered masters out there.

Also, I have one artwork featured in Udon's upcoming Darkstalkers Tribute book. I'll post the artwork here as soon as the book is released.

Again, regarding both books, congratulations to all the artists that made the cut this year and thank you for the judges' hard work. Also am grateful for everyone's support all this time. Couldn't have made it without you guys.

Check out Udon's and Spectrum's website for further information regarding the books' contributors and/or their release dates:

As of now I'm currently opening slots for commissions and have also established new rates. Please note that whatever previous rates that have been agreed upon deals that has taken place before this announcement would still be valid. The new rates would only be applicable to new commissions or previous projects that haven't reached an agreement concerning rates.

All my work is currently in digital format and the following price are for personal commissions only. Please PM me via note or email me (skincoloredcoffee@hotmail.com) for commercial related work.

Character with Background (scene)Black and white linework...........................$80Toned/colored......................................$100

* These rates are applicable to change according to the amount of detail/number of character/complexity of background that is present in the image, and also the schedule. Just PM me for anything that I haven't listed or if there are other additional services (concept design, etc.) required.

** I reserve the right to sell/use the finished images and/or final printed publications for my personal portfolio and/or post it in websites which I am a member of.

Process1. Send me the contents of the commission and reference if any via DA note2. Once we agreed on the rates and schedule I'll send you a rough sketch. 3. Once you agreed on the sketch please pay 50% up front first 4. Once I've gotten the first half of the payment I'll finish the work according to the agreed deadline, and send you the low-res file 5. As soon as I received the second half of the payment I'll send you the hi-res TIFF file (max 300dpi A4 size).

For all of you guys who have requested them as print, unfortunately I might not sell them on DA anytime soon.

But there's hope yet!

Apparently these two would be included on this year's Spectrum book, officially titled Spectrum 15</strong>. Am greatly honored to be in the same pages that would feature the works of the who's who in contemporary fantastic art not to mention an amazing lineup of everyone's favorite artists, such as:

Yes I haven't been prolific at all lately, ergo the absence of new submissions. It's not that I'm terribly busy, I'm just... burnt-out. Creativity all squeezed out and restocking is going mighty slow as always, since I'm a lazy alien and all that. I'm having issues with drawing at work, too, because I'm never comfortable drawing when other people's around because then I would have to fret and worry about having some random earthling looking over my shoulder and catch me and my muses in such intimacy. And yes, I know, it's just me.

Ultimately the time-out is because I don't want to make half-assed personal work; I believe that once I've decided to do something for myself, it had better be well worth the effort. Hopefully I'd be able to whip out something decent in the near future--I need the practice.

@ DeadXCross: Sorry man, looks like that kiriban would have to wait ;_;

Last night I opened this dusty sketchbook from my college years and was appalled by the sheer numbers of mistakes the drawings had--in anatomy, perspective, lighting, you name it, it's there. But mistakes aren't there to be our cliff, our detour, our road-end... it's there to be our milestones, our margins, our breadcrumbs; something we use to find the way home into ourselves. The more we open our eyes, hearts, and minds to our faults and errs, the more lesson we can derive from it. The more we may evolve.

I think the best thing about art is that it has no limit. We can't be 'on top of the game' because the 'game' has no top. Even the 'best' artists out there are students; pupils to other artists who are in turn pupils to other artists, learning from each other. There's always room for improvement, there are always ways to make your work better, there are always new paths and techniques to explore.

For me, the best artists are those who constantly travel outside their comfort zone; not those who are happy with where they are and stay there. There is no end to learning; and in art, that could not be any truer.

Art is just one big adventure, and everyone can sign up. Starting today, let's step off our happy place and join the ride.

PS: Vertigo's Lucifer ended in total awesomeness for me last night. Kick-ass.

The energy-saving version of Google. Go look for stuff here and help save the planet. Nuff said.

www.bookcrossing.com

Just finished a great book and feel like sharing it with others? Make a stealthy drop on the park bench and see where that book ends up--not to mention saving trees in doing so. Visit site for more info.

HOT INTERNET CHAT! Feeling emo and yet nobody cares? Still searching for that age-old question about omnipresence and humanly existance? Or just brimming with a sense of humor and looking for a way to pass the time? He listens to all.

www.orisinal.com

Simple yet awesome Flash games to entertain or frustrate. Beautiful visuals and equally soulful background music to boot. Don't forget to leave a message on the guestbook!

www.getdota.com

Feed your craving for destruction and update your current version...

www.dota-allstars.com

...or learn more if you've never heard of this nerve-wrecking brainspawn before.

Rules :1 - Post these rules2 - Each person tagged must post 8 random facts about themselves3 - Tags should write a journal of these facts4 - At the end of the post 8 more persons are tagged and named5 - Go to their page and leave a comment telling them they've been 'tagged'

Random thingamajigs:

1. My favorite thing to do is nothing. Whole days could pass while I immerse with reckless abandon in this exciting hobby.2. I can't draw cars.3. I have OCD, and I hate shaking hands with other people because I'm also germaphobic.4. I never comb my hair.5. I like books. Not reading books, just books. Having them around help me look smart.6. Contrary to popular belief, I am a she, so please refrain from calling me 'man', 'dude', 'bud', or any other masculine terms of endearment.7. When cornered in DoTA, my subconsciousness kicks in and I will squeal like a pre-schooler.

Well, on to the best part. I tag everyone who reads this, especially these unfortunate suckers: